


virtue

by JenTheSweetie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, M/M, Sam Winchester is So Done, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:34:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28623381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenTheSweetie/pseuds/JenTheSweetie
Summary: “Son of a bitch,” Dean breathed.  “Did you just slip me a heavenly little blue pill?”Or, five times Cas used his angel mojo during sex, and one time he didn't.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 23
Kudos: 270





	virtue

**Author's Note:**

> Like many people, I've been using 2020 to try new things, and oops I accidentally started watching Supernatural. I came up with this as I was watching S8, so it takes place in that era, aka a fully powered up Cas with wings, but without any main plot.

It wasn’t that Dean wasn’t _happy_ about his first time with Cas, it was just that he’d expected things to be a little more… angelic.

Not _better_ or anything. Dean had _absolutely_ no complaints in that department; the whole thing had been pretty freaking great if Dean did say so himself, which he did. Unexpected, sure, but _awesome_. All _he’d_ expected out of the night was to bitch to Cas the whole freezing three mile walk home from the bar, maybe burn off a little of the post-salt-and-burn booze he’d consumed on his own before Cas had turned up. He hadn’t expected that, two miles in, Cas would turn to him on the sidewalk and say irritably, “Is there anything I can do to get you to _be quiet?_ ” and that Dean would grab the front of his trenchcoat, maybe to deck him or something, Dean wasn’t totally sure, and that Cas would head off the punch by _kissing_ him. 

And he _definitely_ hadn’t expected that he’d kiss Cas back.

But hell, unexpected wasn’t always a bad thing, and if the way Cas was still catching his breath was any indication, he agreed. He’d blown the angel’s _mind_.

But the angel’s mind being blown had not, it turned out, been particularly different than anybody’s else’s mind being blown. It wasn’t that Dean was disappointed, it was just that, in all the times he’d thought about sleeping with Cas - which wasn’t, like, a _ton_ , but wasn’t _zero_ , either - he’d always thought it would be… more. Not like he’d thought Cas would come rainbows or whatever, but he thought maybe there’d be some kind of confirmation that, yup, he’d just had a roll in the sack with an angel. Some kinda heavenly glow, or something. 

Actually, now that Dean thought about it, it sounded pretty stupid.

And anyway, Cas sure wasn’t complaining. He was staring at Dean - normal, obviously, and only slightly more unnerving than usual by virtue of the fact that they were horizontal and, you know, naked - and breathing hard, and looking about as happy as Cas ever did, which wasn’t saying _much_ but it was saying something. 

If this had been a normal hook up, back in the days when he did that kind of thing all the time, Dean would be starting to plan his departure - maybe throw out, “I’d love to stay, but I got work in the morning”, or maybe settling in for a quick nap before sneaking out the door in the middle of the night - but this was _Cas_ , and Dean didn’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing but he was pretty sure you didn’t hit it and quit it with a guy you’d known as long as he’d known Cas. So instead he gave Cas a winning smirk. “Good time?”

“Of course,” Cas said, and then paused, looking slightly embarrassed, said, “except…”

And oh _shit_ , Dean was right: there _shoulda_ been some kind of angelic component and it hadn’t happened. He didn’t have a _ton_ of experience with dudes, but it wasn’t _none_ , and he thought he’d done okay by human standards. Maybe not, though, since now Cas was looking uncomfortable, almost a little stressed out, and crap, Dean was gonna feel like an asshole if he’d missed some major component of angelic orgasm. 

“Except what?” Dean said.

Cas glanced down, and Dean followed his gaze to - oh. _Oh_.

“Do you think you might be able to do that again soon?” Cas said, looking hopeful.

Dean grinned. “Oh, this is gonna be _fun_.”

-

Today _sucked_.

First of all, there’d been a shifter. Then, it turned out the shifter had been hanging out with a vamp, because they were just _like that_ , and the thing had gotten the jump on Sam and thrown him down a freaking flight of stairs. Dean had ganked the shifter _and_ the vamp and dragged Sam out okay, at least until he’d dinged up the passenger side door of the Impala throwing his brother’s concussed ass into his seat; he’d wait until Sammy felt better to complain about that, but mark his fucking words he _would_ be complaining.

And now Sam was passed out in a crappy motel bed, and the air conditioner was loud as hell, and all Dean wanted was some ice to get his beer down from “sweltering” to “potentially drinkable”, but the _damn ice machine wasn’t working._

__

“Fuck,” he said, dropping his head against the machine. 

And then he had - well, it was kind of a rude idea, actually, but it _would_ end with him getting some ice. And possibly something else. Not that he was counting on that - he wasn’t the kind of guy who sent up heavenly booty calls or anything - and he tried, usually, not to do shit like this, to _abuse celestial power_ or whatever Sam called it, but. 

Goddamn did he want some ice. 

He looked up at the sky. “Hey, Cas? You busy? We’re at this motel on route 80 outside Elkton, Econo-something, if you wanted to - ”

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said, and then he was kissing him. 

“Oh,” Dean said, dropping the ice bucket with a clatter.

Castiel didn’t seem to notice; he pushed Dean up against the wall next to the ice machine and shoved his tongue down Dean’s throat, and it was a _little_ aggressive considering ten seconds ago Dean had been standing there alone trying to get some ice but he definitely wasn’t going to complain. Cas was basically fucking his mouth, his hands pinning Dean’s hips against the brick wall of the motel like he was trying to devour him, maybe rough him up a little, which was new. Actually, Cas seemed to be trying out something new every time they did this, which wasn’t that many times but Dean could already tell he’d never get tired of the variety.

Cas slid a hand under Dean’s shirt, brushed the tips of his fingers underneath Dean’s waistband. Dean shuddered; it would tickle, under other circumstances, but under these circumstances it just made him twist his hands in Castiel’s coat and pull him closer. 

“You’re tense,” Cas murmured in his ear, skittering his hands along Dean’s lower back. 

“Long day,” Dean grunted while Cas pressed kisses down his throat. “Sam got hurt. Baby got dinged.”

“So you prayed to me,” Cas said, and his voice was fucking _heated_ around the word _prayed_ which, shit, that should not be so _hot_ , Dean thought as he yanked his face back to kissing distance and gave him some of the heat right back. He was shameless, because _damn_ it had been a shitty day and this - an armful of angel, a thigh between his legs, and Cas’s surprisingly skilled mouth on his - was _just_ what the doctor ordered. 

Down the hall, a door slammed shut, and Dean jumped. “Hey, pal, listen,” he said, wrenching his mouth away from Cas’s with not inconsiderable difficulty, “I’m not complaining, but we’re in the middle of Kentucky and there might be some people around here who, you know, might not take too kindly to seeing two dudes getting hot and heavy when they wanna get some ice - ”

  
“They can’t see us,” Cas said, biting Dean’s lower lip.

“Holy - what? Whaddya mean, they can’t - ”

“I’ve blocked us from view,” Cas said. “We are invisible to the human eye.”

“Oh,” Dean said. “Okay.”

And then Cas dropped to his knees.

“Oh, holy shit,” Dean said. “Cas - ”

“No one can see.” Cas looked up at him innocently, and Dean thunked his head back against the ice machine and groaned. “Or hear.” 

That sneaky son of a bitch.

Twenty minutes later, Dean tiptoed back into his room, knees shaking in the good way. He was trying to be quiet but - 

“Dean?” Sam said, sounding sleep-confused.

“Hey, just me,” Dean whispered. “Go back to sleep, Sammy.”

“Where were you?” 

“Ice machine,” Dean said. 

“Oh, can I have some?”

“Some what?” 

“Ice,” Sam said. “In a glass of water?”

“Oh,” Dean said. “There wasn’t any.”

“Any… ice?”

“Nope,” Dean said. “Machine was broken.”

“So you went to buy some?”

“Uh,” Dean said, “no.”

“But you were gone like… half an hour,” Sam said.

“Go back to sleep,” Dean snapped.

-

Dean figured they had twenty four minutes until Sam got back.

Here’s how he knew: it was eight and a half, maybe nine minutes back to that taco place just off the highway. It was a little late for lunch but way too early for dinner, so it wouldn’t be busy, and anyway when they’d eaten there last night service had been quick, so: six minutes to order and get the food and nine minutes back. 

Dean could do a _lot_ in twenty four minutes.

The minute the door shut behind Sam, Dean was out of his chair and leaning across the rickety table to grab Castiel’s tie. “Up,” he said.

Cas frowned. “We told Sam we’d continue to research - ”

“I know what we told Sam,” Dean said, crushing his mouth to the angel’s. “Sorry, you wanna keep reading about Sumerian moon rituals instead?”

Cas was a nerd sometimes, but Dean had learned he wasn’t _that_ much of a nerd. “We don’t have much time.”

“I can be quick,” Dean said, grinning. 

Dean spent the vast majority of his post-pubescent life sharing a room with his brother, which meant he had a lot of experience messing around in places where he knew he might not have a lot of time. He knew what it took to be efficient: getting naked was cool and all, but clothes just kinda pushed out of the way for a minute was hot too, and it was one thing to take your time but a totally _different_ kind of fun to just freaking go for it, messy and fast and a little too rough.

“Yeah, there,” he mumbled in Cas’s ear, grinding down as Cas’s grip tightened around him. “Harder, Cas - ”

“Dean,” Cas murmured. He was thrusting up impatiently where their hands were tangled together between them, his brow sweaty, and Dean _loved_ that, seeing that he’d turned Cas from sitting-at-the-table-debating-with-Sam-about-translations to dirty-sweaty-desperate so fast. He’d seen Cas a lot of ways but this was one of the best, strewn out on the bed under him, trenchcoat balled up under him and head thrown back, his lips parted around Dean’s name, and when Cas looked him straight in the eye and repeated it, breathless, “ _Dean_ , _”_ Dean came into his hand with a cut-off groan.

“Told you,” Dean said as he pressed open-mouth kisses against Cas’s neck. “ _Quick_.”

“My understanding was that that isn’t something to be proud of,” Cas said.

“It is if it’s on _purpose_.”

“Human sexuality is very confusing.”

“You don’t seem to mind it too much,” Dean said, slithering down off the side of the bed to kneel between Cas’s legs.

“There’s always something new to learn,” Cas said wryly as Dean took him into his mouth.

This, Dean had been practicing; it was still kinda new, doing it in the daylight, and sober, and with somebody he hadn’t just met, but he was getting used to it. And Cas fucking _loved_ it: when Dean was kneeling at Cas’s feet with his dick in Dean’s mouth he looked at Dean like he hung the goddamn moon, which was crazy because Cas actually _knew_ who’d hung the moon and he knew damn well it wasn’t Dean. 

Dean actually kinda lost track of time down on the floor, watching Cas watch him, but then he remembered something he’d thought of the other night, when he’d been - okay, he’d been watching porn, but he’d actually been thinking about Cas, and things Cas might like, and he’d been thinking about one of those dumb porn things that he was pretty sure people didn’t actually _do_ all that much but was really hot _conceptually_. He wanted to show Cas all the things that were conceptually hot in the known universe, and so he pulled back, one hand still wrapped around Cas, and said, “Hey, before you come, pull out, okay?”

  
“Out?” Cas repeated, a furrow between his eyebrows.

“Yeah, trust me,” Dean said, and of course Cas did, so he just nodded and let Dean get back to it. 

It was only a minute later, maybe, when Cas pushed at his shoulder urgently, and Dean released him with a wet _pop_ , grinned up at him, and said, “Okay, come on my face.”

Cas looked confused for a second, and then his face went slack and he _did_ , and Dean - oh holy shit, if Dean hadn’t just come he woulda been ready to go in a heartbeat, watching Cas’s eyes widen as he felt Cas warm and wet against his lips and cheek. 

“What’d you think of that?” Dean said, grinning up at him and letting his tongue dart to lick at the corner of his lip.

A shudder ran through Cas’s body like a surprised little aftershock. “That was - unexpected.” He blinked, dazed. “Can we do it again?”

“I mean not _immediately_ , but sure,” Dean said, and he wanted to kiss him, was just about to stand up and do exactly that, when he heard the turn of a key in a lock.

He said, “Fu - ”

“ - ck,” he finished, and Cas was gone.

“Soup’s on,” Sam said, coming through the door with a plastic bag full of tacos like everything was completely normal and he hadn’t just walked in on his brother getting a facial. “What are you doing on the floor?”

Dean looked around. Yeah, his clothes were back in place, including his boots (which he’d taken off hours ago), and Cas was across the room, sitting calmly in the chair he’d been in when Sam had left. His tie was askew. 

Oh yeah, and Dean’s face was. Ahem. Clean. 

“Huh?” Dean said.

Sam raised his eyebrows. “You drop something?”

“No,” Dean said. “So what took you so long?”

-

“Come pick me up,” Sam said through the phone.

Dean sighed. “Can’t you try the car again?”

“Dean, I know how to hotwire a freaking car, it’s dead. Why can’t you just come pick me up? I’m not even an hour out of town.”

Dean knew he wasn’t even an hour out of town. But they’d been on this hunt for almost a week and he’d been horny as fuck for _days_ , couldn’t catch a damn second to get Cas alone and he thought he’d finally found it: Sam, out on the edge of the county investigating the farm the first vic had visited before he kicked the bucket. Dean figured he and Cas could go back to the hotel, grab a shower (hopefully together) and have a solid hour, maybe two, before Sam tramped his big giant feet back through the door. He’d been looking forward to it all day. 

And now Sam had picked the worst freaking car to steal in all of goddamn Arkansas and Dean had to go pick him up. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right. All right. We’re on our way.”

Even Cas looked a little disappointed as he climbed into Baby’s passenger seat. “We could call him a taxi.”

Dean huffed a laugh. “You see any cabs around here, Cas? C’mon, we’ll just make him listen to Zep the whole way back.”

The town faded away quickly - it was like three blocks in every direction and then nothing but farms and scattered houses, just pinpricks of light in the moon-baked landscape. It was fine, being in the car with Cas instead of back at the motel. Dean was totally fine with it. It was _fine_.

That’s when Dean had an idea.

“Hey,” he said, watching out of the corner of his eye as Cas looked at him. “You heard of road head?”

Cas tilted his head. “Road head?”

  
“Come on. Sound it out. Head? I know you know that one. Now put road in front of it.”

Cas considered it. “That seems dangerous.”

“It’s not,” said Dean, with the confidence of a man who had done it exactly once. “I mean, not on an empty stretch like this. We haven’t passed anybody in like ten minutes.”

“It would be distracting for you,” Cas said, which wasn’t a _no_.

“It’s a straight shot out to the farm. And anyway, you can angel mojo us back on the highway if we start drifting, right?”

There was a long moment of silence during which Dean wondered if he’d finally found something Cas wasn’t down to try. And then - 

Cas slid across the bench and ran a hand up Dean’s thigh. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

It was _really_ damn hard to keep your eyes on the road when you had a lapful of angel going down on you, but Dean was a man of his word so he did his best. There had been a little bit of sorting out, keeping Cas’s head away from the steering wheel and the one moment where Cas had kinda kicked the dash that had made Dean flinch, but now that they’d gotten going Dean was into it. So into it that his mouth started running, like it did sometimes; he couldn’t help it. 

“So good, Cas,” he said, tightened his hands on the wheel. “Fuck, you feel so good. Don’t stop, man, that’s - you’re so _good_ , Cas. I can’t believe you’re - can’t believe you said yes, Cas, I can’t - ”

Cas hummed around his dick, clearly less concerned about the whole “reckless driving” thing than he’d previously claimed.

“Ffffuck,” Dean hissed between his teeth, truly trying to keep his hands at two and ten because he did _not_ want to get pulled over before he came. He babbled on, a man freaking _possessed_ by six days of blue balls and a wide open road with nobody but him and his angel. “God _damn_ , Cas, you’re - just seeing you, and the car - god, I want to do everything to you, Cas. Everything. One of these days I’m just gonna - I’m gonna pull over, I’m not gonna wait, I’m gonna pull over and throw you over the hood of my baby and just fuck you, right there on the side of the road. God, Cas, don’t _stop_ \- ”

But Cas, the son of a bitch, pulled off and said, roughly, “Pull over.”

“What?” Dean barked. “You fucking kidding me?”

  
Cas pulled back and looked Dean in the eye, his pupils blown wide. “Pull. Over.”

Dean felt like an idiot, driving down I-40 staring at Cas with his dick hanging out of his pants, but he tapped the brakes and pulled off onto some kinda side road that seemed to lead to nothing at all. “What’s going on? Look, Cas, you ever don’t want to do something, you just tell me to fuck off, I won’t take it personally - ”

“Out,” Cas said, throwing open the passenger side door and climbing out. 

“I - _what_ ,” Dean said, zipping his aching dick back into his pants and wondering if Cas was about to smite him for the sin of lame dirty talk or being distracted behind the wheel, and followed Cas around to the front of the car. “What the hell are - ”

And then Cas grabbed him, threw him against the still-hot hood, and said, “Do it.”

Dean stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“Fuck me,” Cas said gravely, “over the hood of the car.”

Dean felt like his brain had melted out of his ears. “Cas. That was just - that was just something you _say_ \- ”

“So you don’t want to?” Cas said, like he was freaking _daring_ Dean to do it. 

  
Dean looked around. The brush here was dense, and you’d have to really crane your neck and have damn good night vision to see anything from the road, but still - you didn’t just pull over and fuck a guy over the hood of your car. It wasn’t a _thing_.

Castiel, however, did not seem to know it wasn’t a thing.

Dean licked his lips. “Really?”

“Unless it was all just ‘talk’,” Cas said, giving him the goddamn air quotes, and Dean was _not_ gonna stand for that. 

“Fuck,” Dean said, and kissed him. “Holy shit, you are a freaking maniac, Cas, you are seriously - wait a second. I don’t - the stuff. We need. It’s back at the motel.”

  
Cas stared at him like _he’d_ been the one to suggest something totally insane. “What?”

“Lube,” Dean said, because he was an adult and could use adult sex words with his adult sex partner. “We don’t have any.”

Cas’s mouth slowly fell open. It was a very human gesture that Dean didn’t see all that often. “You do realize I’m an _angel_ , right?”

Dean was the one staring now. “You can - that? You. Oh. _Really_? How long you been hiding _that_ , huh?”

“I’d never really thought about it,” Cas admitted, but Dean didn’t really give a crap anymore because he was too busy crowding Cas up against Baby and unzipping all over again. His dick, which had flagged a little bit during the whole confusing interruption, was back in the game and he needed Cas to be wearing about a thousand percent less pants _now_.

Magical fucking lube. Would wonders never cease.

Cas groaned loudly as Dean lined himself up. “ _Move,_ Dean.”

“Well fucking forgive me for trying to be a gentleman,” Dean said, getting a rhythm going. “You good?”

“Yes,” Cas said, and Dean could feel his hand moving in time with their bodies. “This wasn’t the - ah - first time you’d thought about this.”

  
“About what?” 

“Sex on the hood of the car,” Cas said, like it was a normal thing to say. 

“Fu - no,” Dean admitted, gritting his teeth because look, at this point he had nothing to hide. He was fucking an angel over the hood of the sexiest goddamn car on the planet and dreams really did come true. “Not even close to the first time I’d - fuck - thought about it.”

“But it’s the first time you’ve done it,” Cas said. His voice was starting to get more gravelly, like it did before he came, and Dean was starting to wonder if _Cas_ had thought about it before too.

“Oh yeah,” Dean confirmed, holding Cas’s hips firmly and murmuring into Cas’s ear. “Never done this with anybody - never - oh, god, Cas, _yes_ \- never - anybody but you -”

“ _Yes_ ,” Cas said, and Dean would have plenty of time later to think about what it meant that _that_ was what made Cas come but right now he was busy picturing what the hood of his car looked like at the moment and coming himself, so, you know. He’d deal with that later.

They stayed like that, bent over the hood of the Impala, kinda catching their breath. “Holy shit,” Dean said, when he felt capable of speech again. “That was - ”

“Good,” Cas finished.

“Good,” Dean imitated, rolling his eyes and pressing a kiss to the back of Cas’s neck. “Understatement of the year, Cas.”

Cas cleaned them up - all except Baby, who he was under strict instructions never to touch with his mojo without _very_ explicit permission, and who Dean wiped down with a microfiber cloth - and then they got back in and drove the rest of the way out to the farm. Every time Dean glanced over, Cas had a pleased little air about him, and Dean had to stare straight out the windshield to hide his grin.

“Took you long enough,” Sam said when he slid into the seat Cas had vacated for him. They gave each other shit all the way back into town, and even Cas weighed in from the back seat with some overly technical but still hilarious commentary on Sam’s failure to choose a car that could make it 50 miles before crapping out. They stopped for gas and Dean made Sam pump it in exchange for the ride, which Sam bitched about, but Dean kinda felt like everything was all right with the world anyway.

When Dean came back from paying for the gas, Sam nodded him over. “Dean. C’mere.”

“What?”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “Did you guys have sex in the car?” 

Dean blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I hope you took it to the backseat, is all,” Sam continued blithely, like Dean hadn’t almost just fallen over out of sheer shock. “That’s common courtesy, man.”

“I didn’t - when would - I mean, _who_ would I - ”

“You have that _look_ ,” Sam said. “You think I don’t know when you - ? Come on. And he has the look too, for the record. It’s like you taught it to him. _Smug_. Unbelievable.”

Dean stared at him. He was grasping at straws, but he didn’t know how to stop. “Who?”

“Are we really gonna keep pretending I don’t know?” Sam said, raising his eyebrows.

Dean, who hadn’t realized they had been doing any such thing, said, “What?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Whatever, man. I’m happy for you and all, just not in my seat, okay?” 

“Screw you,” Dean said, because that was the safest answer. He finished filling the gas tank without a word, torn between being grumpy and relieved, and ignored Sam’s little smirk from where he was leaning against the car looking at his phone. 

Then he thought about it for a second, went back around to Sammy’s side, leaned in close, and said, “Actually, we did it on the _hood_ of the car.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope,” Dean said. 

“Goddammit it.”

“That’s right,” Dean said smugly. “You owe me fifty bucks!”  
  
“It was twenty bucks,” Sam said, “and that bet was _fifteen years_ ago, Dean.” 

“Exactly, that’s inflation,” Dean said.  


“That’s not how inflation works,” Sam grumbled.

“That’s exactly how inflation works.”

“Oh my god, that is _not_ \- ”

“What are you arguing about?” Cas asked as they both pulled their doors shut behind them. 

“Nothing,” they said in unison.

-

“I’m gonna sleep for a week,” Dean said.

“Enjoy,” Sam said, sounding just as exhausted as Dean felt. The hunt had ended up okay - the demons hadn’t been super smart, and they’d sent three teenagers home to their parents after the assholes possessing them had smoked out - but they’d staked out the wrong place all the night before and then driven straight home because Dean just wanted his own damn bed. It had seemed like a good plan when they left Cedar Rapids but now, 43 hours into being awake, Dean felt like shit. He was sure he used to pull multiple all-nighters in a row with nothing but a cup full of Gas ‘n Sip coffee to get him through; then again, he didn’t used to be 35 years old and carrying around an assload of injuries that never really had time to heal. 

He opened the door to his room and released a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. It smelled like old paper and dust and some other smell that Dean had recently begun to associate with the room itself, something that must be his own sweat and shampoo and dirty laundry, and it coulda been kinda gross but it wasn’t, really, because he’d never been somewhere long enough that it could smell like _him_ before. 

Enough of that; Dean would have plenty of time to get mushy about having time to stink up a place when he wasn’t feeling like he coulda been facedown 30 hours ago. He toed off his shoes and kicked off his jeans and collapsed straight into bed, burying his face in the pillow and starting to feel himself slide toward unconsciousness almost before he’d gotten comfortable.

And then he heard the door creak open.

He cracked an eye. “Cas?”

Cas stood next to the bed, staring down at him. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean hoped, a little blearily, that Cas couldn’t smell the room as much as Dean could. It just seemed like that would be embarrassing. “‘M sleeping.”

“You’re not yet,” Cas said.

“Bout to be,” Dean said. “How’d you know we were back?”

“Sam texted me your time of arrival,” Cas said. He leaned down and pressed his lips to Dean’s. 

Dean kissed him back, sleepily, and then burrowed back into his pillow. “I mean it. I’m sleeping. I haven’t slept in, like, a million years.”

  
“You have not been alive for one million years,” Cas said, and kissed him again. 

There was heat in it this time, and it pricked something in Dean a little more awake - the idea of Cas, pressed up against him, warm and soft and naked, sounded pretty amazing, but - 

But sleep sounded better. Jesus. He _was_ old. 

He pulled away. “Cas, I’m serious. Come back later?”

“No,” Cas said, and climbed on top of him.

“Fucking hell,” Dean murmured, just before Cas started sucking a bruise into his throat. “You miss me, pal?”

“Very much,” Cas said, in that too-sincere way of his that usually made Dean squirm but kinda felt nice, just now, probably because Dean was too tired to worry about it. Cas was sliding his hands up Dean’s shirt, skating over his ribs and his hip, sliding down toward his waistband.

And finding nothing. 

“Cas,” Dean said. “I told you. It’s not that I don’t want to, but I’m wiped out. It ain’t personal, all right? Eight hours. Hell, gimme six.”

Cas frowned. “You aren’t capable right now.”

“I don’t love the phrasing, but yeah. It’s a no-go.”

There was a pensive silence. Dean remembered the first time he got turned down for sex; it sucked, but Cas would live. Dean considered falling asleep while Cas went on his personal journey with it. 

“I could solve this,” Cas said, thoughtfully.

“Solve?” Dean said. “What do you - ”

And then Cas tapped two fingers to Dean’s forehead and Dean felt a ribbon of heat run straight through him, straight - oh. Straight to his dick.

“ _Son of a bitch_ ,” he breathed. “Did you just slip me a heavenly little blue pill?” 

“If that means what I think it means, yes,” Cas said, kissing him again.

Dean’s hips jerked up of their own accord. “Oh, you’re an _asshole_ ,” he growled, rolling them over until he could pin Cas under him. 

“I’ll make it up to you,” Castiel said with a self-satisfied little smile, and then he did.

Dean woke up hours later, disoriented and naked, and found the bed next to him cold. He stumbled down the hallway in a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt from the floor and found Sam, eating a piece of bread with peanut butter, and Cas, sitting with his hands around a cup of coffee he wasn’t drinking.

“Sleep good?” Sam said with his mouth full.

Dean grunted non-committally, filled a cup with water and downed it, then started on his own peanut butter toast. 

“Because you know this place echoes,” Sam continued.

Dean fought back a blush. “Bite me, Sammy.”

“My apologies, Sam,” Castiel said.

“Yeah, it’s his fault,” Dean agreed.

“Definitely don’t need the details,” Sam said, trudging out of the kitchen. “I’m going back to bed. Think you two can keep it down?”

“Think you can go fuck yourself?” Dean called after him.

“I should not have kept you awake,” Cas said seriously as Sam’s footsteps faded down the hall.

Dean shoved half a slice of toast in his mouth. “I mean, I wasn’t exactly complaining, man. But yeah, humans gotta sleep. You know that.”

“Yes,” Cas said. 

Dean watched him. Cas actually looked like he felt bad, which made Dean feel kind of bad, because it hadn’t been _that_ much of a hardship getting an amazing blow job in exchange for twenty minutes less sleep, so he reached out with the hand that wasn’t covered in peanut butter and slid it around Cas’s waist. “You coulda just stayed, you know,” he said, without totally knowing where he was going with that. “In my room. Or whatever. It doesn’t - it’s not just sex, you know. You can stay even without sex, is what I’m saying.”

“I know that,” Cas said.

“Okay,” Dean said. “Good.” He chewed thoughtfully. “I think I still feel the effects of that trick.”

“I can assure you that you do not,” Cas said. “It was temporary.”

“Cas,” Dean said. “I said, _I think I still feel the effects of that trick_.” He waggled his eyebrows for emphasis.

“Oh,” Cas said, and smiled.

-

Dean pulled off the road just after midnight. 

He didn’t bother to ask Sam or Cas if they wanted to stop, just put the Impala in park and got out of the car at the first motel that looked halfway decent by their standards. It was another ten hours to the bunker and he’d be damned if he was going to sit in the car in silence until sun up; no, he was gonna grab a six pack, drink most of it, and then catch a few hours sleep before they drove the rest of the way home.

“Get two rooms,” Sam said just before Dean shut the door behind him.

Dean stuck his head back in the car. “Scuse me?” 

“I want my own room,” Sam said. “You two are either gonna fight or - whatever - and either way, I’m out.”

“Shut up,” Dean snapped, but he got two rooms. When he threw the second set of keys at his brother, Sam clapped Cas on the shoulder - _traitor_ , Dean thought - and went to his own room across the parking lot without a word. 

Cas followed Dean into the first room quietly, waited while Dean did his usual checks and drew his salt lines and dropped his bag by the bed. He said nothing while Dean went into the bathroom and washed the blood off his hands and face - his and Cas’s mixed together, who knew whose was whose - and then threw his stained flannel on the floor to go into the laundry bag later. 

“Dean,” Cas said finally, when Dean had run out of things to do, “I don’t want to fight.”

“Well, Cas, we don’t always get what we want,” Dean said, crossing his arms over his chest. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Cas looked tired. “I was thinking that I was saving your life.”

  
“By trading it for yours,” Dean said. “You know better than that. We don’t trade hostages.”

“It was me they were interested in.”

  
“Which is why I was the one who shoulda stayed!” Dean said. “They were barely even roughing me up!”

“I could not get you out without offering myself in exchange,” Cas explained, patiently, like Dean was a fucking _kid_. “The wards were - ”

“The wards were there to sap your power so they could _kill_ you, man,” Dean said. 

“They would have eventually killed you too.”

“Okay, so I would’ve died! That doesn’t mean you make a deal!”

Castiel arched an eyebrow. “Interesting choice of words, coming from you.”

“Hey, screw you,” Dean said, pointing a finger in Cas’s face. “Look, we all know what we’re getting into when we go out on a job. Maybe we can fix it, maybe we can’t, we know it can go either way. But you don’t go in offering a trade when you don’t even know they’ll honor their side of the bargain.”

“I did what I had to do to protect you,” Cas said.

“I don’t need protection,” Dean snarled.

“And neither do I,” Cas said. “But we both seem to try anyway.”

  
Dean glared at him. He was so - _pissed_ , that’s what he _wanted_ to feel, but now that the adrenaline had worn off and it was just Cas, standing right in front of him looking earnest, _pissed_ just didn’t seem to cover it. “Goddammit, man,” he growled, and then he grabbed Cas by the lapels and kissed him, hard, because anger was so much cleaner than everything else bouncing around in his head.

“Dean,” Cas said, so simply, and that was _it_. Dean backed him toward the bed with a snarl and pushed him down on it, mouthing at his neck until Cas tilted his head back and sighed, giving Dean more access. 

“Don’t ever do that again,” he said while he stripped Cas’s jacket and coat off, ran his fingers down the buttons of Cas’s shirt. “Don’t ever, ever - ”

“I won’t promise that.”

“Cas - ”

“You won’t promise it either.” Cas scraped his nails up Dean’s back, pulled his belt from its loops and threw it across the room. “And I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“Cas,” Dean growled, biting into the flesh of his shoulder. 

Cas didn’t make him talk much after that; instead he stayed quiet, his lips firm on Dean’s, his hands skating across Dean’s skin. Dean thought they woulda been hard and fast tonight, kinda heated like they sometimes were after they argued, but Cas didn’t seem angry. He seemed _reverent_ , like Dean was precious, and usually Dean hated when Cas looked at him like that, made him feel human and fragile. But tonight Dean had felt something in his chest rear up when Cas had tried to trade his life for Dean’s and he _felt_ kind of fragile, like maybe those assholes back at the warehouse couldn’t break him but Castiel probably could. 

The bed rustled beneath them as Cas rolled them over, got Dean pinned beneath him, kissed his way down Dean’s jaw, across his lower lip, so fucking _gentle_ that Dean writhed. “Cas,” he breathed, “Cas, please, I - ”

“Anything,” Cas interrupted, and Dean was good at dirty talk and good at pushing people around but when he _needed_ something he got shy, somehow; he was used to want, knew how to process and shape it, _use_ it, even, but he couldn’t get used to need. He wasn’t sure he ever would; he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to.

But Cas, who swore up and down he didn’t read minds these days, seemed to know anyway. He took Dean apart with his hands, sure and steady, and when Dean thought he was about to lose it Cas slid inside of him, and he was inside and outside and all around him, fully _present_. Dean didn’t usually like to think about big important shit during sex but suddenly all he could think was that he wanted Cas here, and he wrapped his legs around Cas’s waist like he might be able to make it permanent. 

“Dean,” Cas said, his eyes blown dark, just a ring of blue around the edges, his hair a mess and his lips swollen and he was _gorgeous_ , Dean thought, how had he not seen it for so long?

It was so _much_ , suddenly, and Dean became aware all at once that Cas was doing something - he couldn’t tell what it was, but it was _something_ , some kind of angelic bullshit because Dean was riding the edge but he was also floating, his forehead pressed to Cas and Cas’s eyes wide open and staring into his, and it was like - god, it was like Cas was in his _soul_. It felt like he was glowing - like he couldn’t see or think about anything else besides whatever it was that was warming him from the inside, connecting him to Cas like a physical tether in his chest. Neither of them were talking but it was like he could _hear_ Cas, knew Cas was close too, and he stared into Cas’s eyes and they both came silently and couldn’t, _couldn’t_ look away.

The floaty feeling eased, but it left a kind of echo warmth in its place. Cas pulled out but not away, slid to Dean’s side and ran a hand up and down Dean’s chest kinda soothingly, pressed soft kisses to the corner of Dean’s mouth. 

“What the hell was _that_?” Dean breathed when he felt like he could talk again.

“Hmm?” Cas said, his frowny eyes kind of sex-glazed and vague.

“Whatever you did,” Dean said. “Some kind of - what, like a soul thing? Were we _flying_?”

Castiel stared at him blankly. “We have not changed location.”

“Okay, so,” Dean said, and raised his eyebrows. “What _did_ we do?”

“We had sex,” Cas said, unhelpfully.

“Yeah, I’m familiar with the concept,” Dean said. “But there was something - it was an angel thing, right? You used some kinda mojo right in the middle.”

“No,” Cas said. “That was - sex. Regular human sex.” He frowned. “Was it not?”

“What?” Dean said. “I - yes. Yes?”

“Yes,” Cas repeated. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Course I am,” Dean said, and kissed Cas, unnecessarily. He pulled him closer; it wasn’t _cuddling_ or anything, when it was after sex. It was just - resting. Or whatever. “You gonna stay?”

“Where else,” Cas said, looking completely serious, “would I possibly want to go?”

“That’s what I thought,” Dean said, and burrowed into his pillow. 

-

(Later, when he told Sam about it - without any of the details, because Sam had always made it very clear exactly how much of Dean’s sex life he wanted to hear about and it was none - Sam looked at him like he’d grown a second head and it was a vamp.

“Are you serious?” Sam said. “Like, actually serious?”

“As the fucking grave,” Dean said. “So what, you think it was like, some kind of accidental sex magic or something?”

Sam opened his mouth. Closed it. And then he burst out laughing at the top of his lungs.

“What?” Dean said, irritated, when Sam seemed like he was finally calming down. “Come on, man, this is serious - ”

“I agree,” Sam said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s really serious. Look. Give it, I dunno, a month, and if you don’t figure it out, come talk to me again, okay?”

“A month? What the hell are you talking about?” Dean snapped. “Sammy - ”

“And Dean?” Sam grinned. “Try not to fuck this up.”

And then he left Dean’s room, cackling his head off.)


End file.
